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NEW YORK -- Usernames and passwords of some of Yahoo's email customers have been stolen and used to gather personal information about people those Yahoo mail users have recently corresponded with, the company said Thursday.

Yahoo (YHOO) didn't say how many accounts have been affected. Yahoo is the second-largest email service worldwide, after Google's (GOOG) Gmail, according to the research firm comScore (SCOR). There are 273 million Yahoo mail accounts worldwide, including 81 million in the United States.

"It's an old trend, but it's much more exaggerated now because the programs the bad guys use are much more sophisticated now," says Avivah Litan, a security analyst at the technology research firm Gartner (IT). "We're clearly under attack."

Yahoo said in a blog post on its breach that "The information sought in the attack seems to be names and email addresses from the affected accounts' most recent sent emails."

That could mean hackers were looking for additional email addresses to send spam or scam messages. By grabbing real names from those sent folders, hackers could try to make bogus messages appear more legitimate to recipients.

"It's much more likely that I'd click on something from you if we email all the time," says Richard Mogull, analyst and CEO of Securois, a security research and advisory firm.

The bigger danger: access to email accounts could lead to more serious breaches involving banking and shopping sites.

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That's because many people reuse passwords across many sites, and also because many sites use email to reset passwords. Hackers could try logging in to such a site with the Yahoo email address, for instance, and ask that a password reminder be sent by email.

Litan said hackers appear to be "trying to collect as much information as they can on people. Putting all this stuff together makes it easier to steal somebody's identity."

Yahoo said the usernames and passwords weren't collected from its own systems, but from a third-party database.

Because so many people use the same passwords across multiple sites, it's possible hackers broke in to some service that lets people use email addresses as their usernames. The hackers could have grabbed passwords stored at that service, filtered out the accounts with Yahoo addresses and used that information to log in to Yahoo's mail systems, said Johannes Ullrich, dean of research at the SANS Institute, a group devoted to security research and education.

The breach is the second mishap for Yahoo's mail service in two months. In December, the service suffered a multiday outage that prompted Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer to issue an apology.

Yahoo said it is resetting passwords on affected accounts and has "implemented additional measures" to block further attacks. The company wouldn't comment beyond the information in its blog post. It said it is working with federal law enforcement.

Company: Oracle

Cash compensation: $5.5 million

Stock and options: $90.7 million

Total compensation 1-year change: 24%

Despite his $1 salary, Ellison is not only the highest paid tech CEO this year, but the highest paid of all CEOs.
Most of Ellison's pay comes from his stock grants. In June of 2011 he was given an option to purchase 7 million shares of Oracle (ORCL) common stock.

Mayer left Google (GOOG) to join Yahoo (YHOO) as its CEO, president and a board member in July of 2012. Her base salary was set at $1 million with an annual bonus target set at $2 million a year.
Though she only took home $6 million last year, Mayer reached No. 2 on this list because she was also offered a one-time retention award when she was hired, consisting of stock grants that could total $30 million when they vest over the next five years.

The 81% jump in in Donahoe's salary this year is largely due to a one-time award of about $14.9 million paid in stock. According to a regulatory filing, Donahoe got the grant because he led eBay (EBAY) "successfully through a difficult turnaround ... and positioned it well for additional growth."

Benioff's base salary has been set at $1 million for the past two years. He received a $1.3 million cash bonus last year and almost $19 million in Salesforce.com (CRM) stock options and awards. He also received $650,000 to cover costs related to his personal security, which is "of paramount importance to the company," according to a regulatory filing.

Stephenson, who has served as CEO and president of AT&T (T) since 2007, was paid a $6 million bonus on top of his $1.6 million base salary in 2012. About $13 million of his pay came in the form of stock and awards.

Jacobs was given a $3.4 million cash bonus on top of his $1.2 million salary. Other compensation for the CEO included more than $280,000 for personal use of Qualcomm's (QCOM) corporate aircraft and more than $4,000 for things such as home office costs, personal travel and entertainment.